Anyone know of any great web sites or discussions boards for reviving hard
drives which have failed fir data retreival?

I have two hard drives which failed within 2 weeks of each other before backups
could be made of certain data. I'd like to research the best ways to recover
the data.

In each case, it's a hardware failure and NOT accidentally deleted or otherwise
corrupted data.

I'd appreciate any discussion boards where some experts might hang out or maybe
some COMPREHENSIVE websites dedicated to this. So far I've found a lot of
information but it's all pretty basic and none of it worked. The more
information I can get, the better chance I have.


Let me mention just ONE of the cases here, just in case in addition to
information, someone here has some adivce:

The first drive is a 40GB Western Digital, 2-1/2 years old. It's been used a
lot in the past couple years. Last weekend it quit spinning up. I'd like to
get it to spin up JUST ONCE to get the data off. Right now, you can often feel
the drive 'jerking' in an attempt to start. Just a little vibration here and
there, sometimes hard enough to feel the drive try to rotate in your hand. I've
tried twisting the drive as fast as I could by hand to get the platters to spin.
While this caused more 'jerking', it didn't spin up. I tapped it as hard as I
dared without wanting to cause damage. I put it in the freezer for a while in a
static bag without change. Naturally I've tried different power connectors and
a different power supply. It behaves the same whether the drive is hooked up to
a contoller or just to a power supply alone. I just need ONE good spin-up.

Any ideas and any sources of such info appreciated (and desperately craved)!!!

P.S. The other hard drive is a stranger situation. I didn't want to dilute the
issues by mentioning both at the same time; I will mention the other situation
if someone of considerable expertese responds to this post.